Rated: PG-13

Release Date: 06/23/2010

Production Company: 20th Century Fox

Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz, Maggie Grace,
Marc Blucas, Paul Dano, Viola Davis,
Peter Sarsgaard and Olivier Martinez.

Director: James Mangold. Producers: Joe Roth, Todd Garner, Cathy Konrad, Jose Luis Escolar, Steve Pink and Marsha L. Swinton. Executive Producers: Arnon Milchan and E. Bennett Walsh. Screenwriter: Patrick O'Neil. Cinematography: Phedon Papamichael.

By: Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer Movie Columnist and Critic

It doesn't quite work, the title "Knight and Day," this Tom Cruise-Cameron Diaz spy-thriller-chase-romantic comedy question mark. (The question: Are its toothsome stars still box-office gold, or has their audience moved on?) It's got a generic ring, and while half the title ultimately gets explained, the other half is a lame pun. Huh? As different as night and day? It's like one of those made-up movies that Elaine and Jerry would go see on "Seinfeld."

Happily, this big-budget summer offering, which has undergone numerous name changes and plot and casting iterations in its long trip from spec script to screen, works better than its title.

"Knight and Day" is a slick but jaunty take on a genre that includes the refined "Charade" (Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn), the rollicking "Romancing the Stone" (Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner), and the recent "Killers" (Ashton Kutcher and Katherine Heigl), a genre in which an accidental couple tumbles into dangerous hugger-mugger but manages to stop running long enough to notice the mutual attraction that's going on.

Cruise and Diaz — teamed previously in the 2001 surrealist suspenser, "Vanilla Sky" — are Roy Miller and June Havens. He's cool and affable and, as soon revealed, some kind of secret agent. She's flaky but self-assured and restores vintage muscle cars for a living. They bump into each other (literally) at the airport in Wichita, where he's got a ticket for a flight to Boston and she's booked for a later plane — but manages to squeeze onto this one.

"Sometimes things happen for a reason," Roy says, meaningfully. And sometimes things happen because there wouldn't be a movie otherwise.

As anyone who's seen the trailer knows (it saps the surprise out of some of the movie's snappiest moments), the excitement onboard isn't restricted to the in-flight movie menu. By the time the 727 sets down — in a cornfield — the only passengers left alive are Roy and June. And by the time they meet up again the next morning in Boston (her hometown), a fleet of black SUVs filled with G-men is in hot pursuit, guns ablazin', stunt people a-jumpin' and a-leapin'.

From Boston, the action — all terrifically staged and shot — hops to New York, then the Azores, the Swiss Alps, Austria, Germany, Spain, and South America. Spies get around, and Roy, clearly, is one. But is he a rogue spy? A good guy? Or maybe just a psycho who spent way too much time studying the Bourne trilogy?

June doesn't know, and neither do we. (Although it's not hard to guess: Cruise a baddie? Nah.) But the mystery provides momentum, and gives Diaz's character a necessary degree of wariness.

Smartly directed by James Mangold, whose previous fare — "Walk the Line;" "Cop Land;" "Girl, Interrupted"--— bore considerably more weight and gravity, "Knight and Day" works despite its familiar feints and stock supporting characters. There's Simon Feck (Paul Dano), an eccentric young brainiac whose invention, a self-energizing battery, provides the movie's MacGuffin. There's Agent Fitzgerald (Peter Sarsgaard), the grim colleague on the hunt for Roy, and Viola Davis as the no-nonsense Agency boss. Dano, Sarsgaard, Davis—it's an impressive roster loaded with indie cred, and at times you wonder how they kept a straight face in the thick of this cloak-and-dagger hooey. (But, hey, that's their job.)

Cruise brings that inimitable Cruisiness to the proceedings. No longer boyish, certainly, he nonetheless projects a cocky charm. And he hurls himself into the action: Unless there's sophisticated CG face-pasting going on, much of the running, leaping, whacking, and scrambling appears to be performed by the star himself.

And Diaz works that trademark mix of ditziness, sexiness, and brassiness, whether she's in a canary-colored bridesmaid's dress (with cowboy boots) or perched backward on a fancy motorcycle, spraying automatic-weapons fire at a fleet of vehicles in revved-up pursuit on the cobblestone streets of Seville.

"Knight and Day" isn't going to change the course of history, but it's better written than most studio-brokered projects (Patrick O'Neill gets sole credit, but a good half-dozen scribes reportedly had their mitts on it) and none of those involved seem to be taking themselves too seriously. The locales are luxe, the banter witty, the bullets fly.

Editor's Note: This review reprinted for N2Entertainment.net with permission from Inquirer movie columnist and critic Steven Rea. Contact Rea at srea@phillynews.com or read his blog, "On Movies Online," at www.philly.com/philly/blogs/onmovies.